Friends, I do not rock it old school. I am not a member of the Crystal Ball Contingent.

When I had a physical office space, which was airy and light and comfortable, you would catch nary a whiff of any lingering trails of incense. I did not greet you dressed in flowy tunics or a shawl (or two) draped about my person. There were no candles burning, mostly due to fire regulations, but still.

Now, in the post-pandemic world we meet on Zoom. I work in my home office, and even if you look closely, you’ll still only find a couple of New Age-y trappings in the space. Perhaps you’ll see the small group of crystals on my bookshelf, including the beautiful, perfectly heart-shaped amethyst that was left to me by a dear client who passed away. Or the tarot/divination decks within reach since I use them as part of my meditation practice and in the weekly Everyday Intuition Group as well, where participants are learning how to use them.

Mostly you’ll see a ton of amazing art adorning the walls, including some by my incredibly talented friends, and on other surfaces, a print by Helma af Klint, a few Lego crystals that I built (with help), and a tiny pedestal that displays beautiful note cards with the appropriate illustrated Zodiac sign for the month. That’s it.

I also keep a ton of plants around, disco balls that hang in the windows and scatter light during the day, comfy furniture, and huge bookshelves crammed with great fiction (mostly historical), memoirs, essays, and poetry, as well as plenty of books on spirituality and human development.

On the surface, you might think you were in a very open-minded therapist’s office. But even though I am not a therapist nor do I play one on TV, the vibe is very far from Gypsy Ouji Seance Mystery Realm. To be clear, I am not anti-Gypsy Ouji Mystery Seance Realm. I owe deep respect to my very talented friends and colleagues that are representatives of the Gypsy Ouji Mystery Seance Realm. I have absolutely nothing against that aesthetic at all, but I am on a mission to teach as many people as I possibly can that intuition is not a rare and strange thing that only the slightly kooky among us experience. Intuition has been shoved into the margins of human ability and it needs to be yanked out and normalized above all else. And so, I think the vibe I’ve cultivated is more Your Intuitive in Mom Jeans more than anything else.

Long ago I joined the PTO at my kids’ elementary school because that sounded like an intersection of roles I should take on, a stereotype-challenging choice that broadened the idea of who everyday parents were. Intuitive and coordinator of the bake sale. Unfortunately, for reasons having nothing to do with my unusual talents, and everything to do with being an exhausted parent of young kids who was clearly neither well-rounded nor crafty nor organized enough to be an asset to the organization, it didn’t really work out. I was happier as a room parent, and left the PTO to make room for a parent who had more to give.

But I still intentionally dial back on anything that even sniffs of stereotypical interpretations of my profession so I can show by example that being intuitive is as natural as breathing air. We don’t need props to access our intuition. We all have access to it. It’s abundantly available, like oxygen.

And it’s completely normal for any of us to use that natural resource anytime, to access the guidance and insight that’s available to us, either via the mind’s eye, the capacity to feel others’ feelings as if they were our own, or by honoring the hunches that we can and should count on completely.

Of course at this moment in our human history, intuition isn’t widely considered normal, at all, by many.

Facing this absurdity, I continue anyway. My work is about pushing the needle on it just a little more, everyday.

When someone comes to see me for a private session, this is what will happen: we have a discussion. It’s rather one-sided frankly since I’m the one doing most of the talking, but I do make ample time for questions. What you want to know is important, and even though I usually get there first, in the rare times I don’t, it’s important that you need to feel comfortable asking me about it.

First off, though, I explain what intuition is and how I work.

The information I am relaying is sourced by three main categories of intuition. Clairvoyance is the ability to see images that do not appear to others and that contain meaningful information. Some clairvoyants are objective clairvoyants, who perceive those images in real time and space. Some clairvoyants are subjective clairvoyants, who see images on a movie screen in the mind. I experience both, but for the purposes of a private session, I fall back on subjective clairvoyance. When I take a seat in my personal movie theatre, I can see a variety of things projected onto the screen: moving pictures, slideshows, sometimes strings of words in bold, or even maps.

A good way to understand the difference between objective and subjective clairvoyance is this: say we’re all at a cocktail party. An objective clairvoyant might glance over at a chair and see someone sitting there so clearly they’ll assume they are one of the guests in attendance. A subjective clairvoyant will look over, know that there is someone sitting there, but only see the details in their mind. When I experience moments of objective clairvoyance, I only usually realize it afterward when it’s clear I saw something nobody else did.

I access another level of information using intuitive empathy. Empaths feel the feelings and understand the thoughts of other people as if they were their own. We are prohibited from invading their privacy, by the way which I wish more people understood. No one is reading your mind in line at the grocery store.

This is probably the most common form of intuitive ability and one that most people can relate to since it is similar to emotional empathy. I’ve met more people than I can count who don’t consider themselves intuitive at all but suddenly start nodding when I explain how intuitive empathy works. This ability is much more universal than anyone realizes.

Intuitive empathy is different than just being able to relate to another person or feel compassion for them. An empath can experientially put themselves into another person’s shoes, insomuch as they directly feel what it’s like to be that person emotionally and intellectually. There’s no effort involved. An empath’s gifts give them access to a literal inhabiting of another person’s reality.

If you’ve ever walked into a room and felt unexpectedly angry or sad or anxious, or suddenly felt those things when someone else walked in, you are getting a taste of what it’s like to process information about others through your own emotional system.

In order to do our work well, empaths must be motivated completely by compassion. The best empaths are true examples of the ability to be curious about people in the most imaginatively kind ways. To get the most information for our clients, we must set all our preconceived notions and opinions aside, because we learn very early on how useless it is to judge. We focus our caring for others like a laser on the parts of their lives where they need the most help. Intuitive empathy is not a form of mind-reading or eavesdropping. True empaths are helpers. And the deep compassion that motivates us becomes the gateway through which we can help the most.

Possibly my favorite part about being an empath is that once I’ve established a strong enough connection to read a client with steady accuracy, they become like the hub of a wheel whose spokes connect their emotional/spiritual energy to the energy of all the people, places, and situations they are invested in and care about. So I can travel up and down as many of the parts of that wheel as needed to gather information about the significant people in their lives and how they approach my client, offering clues to mystifying or challenging behavior. And clairvoyance often highlights what needs emphasis like a slide show in the background.

And there’s also this fun little feature: just as I can travel quite deeply into the lives of others, I can also pull up from that perspective, and take in the big picture, looking at things broadly and watching how they and their loved ones are moving through their lives. It’s like shifting between microscopic focus to a bird’s eye view of the same life. That’s very valuable because I can often offer reassurance, take note of what’s unfolding and at what speed, point out hidden opportunities, and issue cautions if necessary.

But what’s especially fascinating is to compare the two points of view. I know of no better tool aside from experience itself to help us see how our own opinions and fears are usually the only things holding ourselves back from the lives we yearn to live and make sense of. Many times I’ve helped someone who was naively assuming that “there’s nothing to see here” in a situation, spot a bear in the woods so to speak, and thus avoid a serious personal or professional miscalculation. Conversely, I’ve also been able to offer a new set of glasses to the timid by pointing out what they thought was a menacing threat, was actually a tree.

The third category of intuitive ability is mediumship.

Mediums in our culture are described in so many different ways it’s confusing. Some people think that all intuitives are mediums, which is not the case. All mediums are intuitives, but not all intuitives are mediums. That’s because a medium is not necessarily clairvoyant or an empath. Some (like me) are, but not all.

Basically, mediums are folks who have the ability to perceive and interact with life independent of the physical human form. That means some mediums can communicate with plants and animals as well. Out of all the intuitive gifts, it is the one that’s the most especially marginalized, and therefore considered super mega woo-woo. To understand it, it’s best to wade in slowly and keep it simple. Think about it this way: Animal communicator? Medium. Herbalist/master gardener? (very likely) a Medium. Talking to dead people/spirit guides? Medium.

Years ago, I was in the middle of a session with a young woman in her 20’s who had found herself at a crossroads and had become mentally paralyzed trying to make some important decisions about her life. She was really down and it seemed the more she tried to get unstuck, the more stuck she felt.

In the middle of the session her maternal grandmother, who had died when my client was a teenager, “sat” down in a chair next to her granddaughter, simply beaming with love for her. This is a very common thing to happen in a session with “the disembodied” as I now affectionately call them. They make their presence known in different ways, but they are always full of love for us, even more so than they were able to express when they were in human form. Sometimes they have a lot to say and jump right in. Sometimes they arrive early but wait until the very end of a session to speak up, just quietly waiting and just sending that powerful love along. Occasionally there will even be a big crowd waiting when the session begins, and I’ll have to tell everyone to form a queue.

My client’s grandmother continued to send loving energy to her, and eventually began to speak about their cherished memories together, filled with important details that would help my client relax into the understanding that she was really there and available to help. Instead of telling her granddaughter what she should do, she reminded her what a strong and self-directed little girl she’d been, how she had always been confident and able to trust herself. “How on earth do you know these things?” my client asked me, her eyes welling with tears.

“Well,” I started to explain.

— “I mean,” she interjected, “….it’s, so…normal, like she’s right here next to me having a conversation and I remember what it feels like to be totally myself,” she said. “That’s how I always felt around her. Free.” Then she said, “It must be so weird to have this happen all the time to you”.

“Actually,” I shrugged, “I don’t find it odd at all”. This kind of questioning from a client is a very important teaching opportunity for me. The key is to keep the focus on how we all can access our intuition. I usually continue by sharing how it was really my own resistance to the idea that I was a medium that had caused me stress in my life, but once I accepted it and realized I couldn’t stop it from happening, it stopped burdening me and became a gift.

But then her grandmother interjected. “Excuse me, Dear,” she said, “Just a quick point.” I paused and told my client, “Hang on a sec, she’s got some other things to say,” preparing to receive the rest and relay it to her.

“Well, this isn’t really a big deal,” she continued, “I mean goodness knows we don’t want you all to worry about how to talk to us over here. But we just thought you should know, it’s considered a bit rude to refer to us as ‘dead people’. Spirit unbounded and all that. Again, not to worry if you forget, but just keep in mind we’re actually more alive than you”.

I burst out laughing.

Turning to my client, I explained. “I think I just got schooled by your granny”.

So there you have it, friends. Intuition is groovy enough without the turban.

Holding you in my heart always,

Susan